Lucerne County Council Close to Approving American Rescue Plan Awards

Approximately 75 organizations are poised to collectively receive $60 million from the federal US Lucerne County bailout plan, according to plans discussed this week by the county council.

Board members have individually reviewed and evaluated 139 external applications through an online portal created by district consultant American Rescue and have yet to receive a list of organizations expected to receive funding.

Before this list can be formed, the council must first publicly vote on the parameters to be used as the final cut decision, council members said.

The council initially set a provisional threshold of 60 points for earmarked funding requests.

However, only 24 projects with $12.3 million in eligible requests have reached that goal, according to a chart presented by Booth Management Consulting to the council on Tuesday.

The presentation states that the average score was 37 based on evaluation factors such as project impact on district priorities, community outcomes, racial equity and inclusion, and a review of the overall project budget. The maximum possible score was 75 points.

As a result, the board plans to reduce the allowable score to 47 points, which will allow $59.9 million to be allocated to 75 organizations.

The Board agreed to approve the change in scoring and other updated parameters at its next meeting on 24 January. For example, the board intends to approve a provision that organizations can only receive one award. Several applicants have submitted more than one request, but board members do not know if any of the top 75 have had more than one request.

Based on feedback from council colleagues that the money should be delivered to recipients as soon as possible, council chair Kendra Radle said that the current plan is for the council to also vote on the awards on January 24th.

Radl stressed that this plan is preliminary and subject to change.

In order to approve both options and awards in one meeting, Radle said, the board won’t receive the final list of recipients from Booth Consulting until it approves the final options during the meeting. If the list is made and presented to the board – and therefore the public – ahead of time, it could be wrong if the expected parameters are changed or not approved, Radle said, noting that the county law office has weighed the preliminary plan.

While this approach can usually raise questions about how the council can vote without reviewing the list beforehand, Radl said the council should stick to the completed ranking anyway. According to her, the decision was entirely based on the independent assessment of the board and could not be changed without prejudice to the procedural board, which had been set up for an impartial assessment of the applicants or outside interference.

The Council has approximately $94.3 million of remaining non-project American Rescue funding. In addition to the $60 million earmarked for external awards, the council has retained $17.9 million for possible allocation to county government projects.

Booth of Columbia, Maryland is acting as an advisor to the county’s American Rescue to help prevent future audit and compliance issues. Company chief Robin Booth reiterated this week that there were initially 141 outside applicants for funding, but two were excluded from consideration because they did not provide all the required information as requested.

Acting County Manager Brian Swetz told board members that their plan to change parameters means more than 53% of external applicants will receive full funding in line with eligibility criteria to complete their projects.

According to the planned schedule, approved recipients must complete the grant packages by February 27th.

Contact Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or tweet @TLJenLearnAndes.